See, you're taking the point of view that it must happen through the prism of the player. That it has to be something the player has agency with, in this case, video game quality. I'll push back on that. Devs were making games for a console more akin to a tin can with a string than a computer. Most developers made their games alone, with very tight time constraints. Code quality was nowhere what it is today, due to the tooling. There were hard limits to what they could offer the player, so of course games look terrible with hindsight.

You can listen to They Create Worlds. They very expertly talked about the preconceived ideas about the crash, and why they're wrong.

http://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-great-video-game-c...